18 months on, actor’s death may be ruled a homicide

More than 18 months after actor Kunal Singh was found dead at his Oshiwara flat, the police now suspect he was murdered.

On February 6, 2008, Singh was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his Oshiwara apartment. Actress Lovina Bhatia, who was with him in the apartment, had claimed she went into the bathroom and returned to find him hanging from the fan. The police believed her suicide theory and closed the case.

Singh’s father, Lt Col Rajendra Singh (retd), had approached the High Court in August 2008, seeking a fresh investigation by an independent agency.

Last week, a division bench of Justice BH Marlapalle and Justice Roshan Dalvi asked the police to lodge an FIR and take necessary action. This followed a report submitted by Kalpana Gadekar, head of the Special Investigation Team, attaching a medical report and the opinion of Dr VN Tasgaonkar, medical officer at Cooper Hospital, Vile Parle.

Dr Tasgaonkar’s report says the postmortem findings and the photographs suggest homicide “due to compression of the neck due to ligature.”

“Psychological evaluation, psychological profiling and her polygraph report show she was deceptive on questions relating to her having witnessed Kunal’s murder, helping murder him, and giving false information about his death,” the report says.

Asking Gadekar to handle the case on a priority basis, the HC has asked her to “take appropriate steps against the accused whose names have by now surfaced.”